The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838Gillman, James
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The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: 1838
Gillman, James
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 1772-1834; Critics -- Great Britain -- Biography; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Biography
In the second edition (the second edition was published in conjunction
with his friends Charles Lloyd and Charles Lamb) is added the following:
"My poems have been rightly charged with a profusion of
double-epithets, and a general turgidness. I have pruned the
double-epithets with no sparing hand; and used my best efforts to tame
the swell and glitter both of thought and diction. This latter fault,
however, had insinuated itself into my Religious Musings with such
intricacy of union, that sometimes I have omitted to disentangle the
weed from the fear of snapping the flower. A third and heavier
accusation has been brought against me, that of obscurity; but not, I
think, with equal justice. An author is obscure, when his conceptions
are dim and imperfect, and his language incorrect, or inappropriate,
or involved. A poem that abounds in allusions, like the 'Bard' of
Gray, or one that impersonates high and abstract truths, like
Collins's 'Ode on the Poetical Character,' claims not to be popular,
but should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the reader;
but this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is warm and
rapid, must expect from his 'contemporaries'. Milton did not escape
it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. We now
hear no more of it, not that their poems are better understood at
present, than they were at their first publication; but their fame is
established; and a critic would accuse him self of frigidity or,
inattention, who should profess not to understand them: but a living
writer is yet sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions or
enter into his feelings, it is more consoling to our pride to consider
him as lost beneath, than as soaring above, us. If any man expect from
my poems the same easiness of style which he admires in a
drinking-song for him, I have not written. Intelligibilia, non
intellectum adfero.
I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings; and I
consider myself as having been amply repaid without either. Poetry has
been to me its own 'exceeding great reward;' it has soothed my
afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has
endeared solitude; and it has given me the habit of wishing to
discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds
me."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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